Design and Development of Automatic Water Flowmeter

Abstract

Effective irrigation water management begins with timing and regulating irrigation water application in a way that will satisfy the need of the crop without wasting water, soil and crop nutrients. This involves supplying water according to the crop requirement, quantity that can be held by the soil and is available to the crop at rates tolerated according to the soil characteristics. So measuring water in fields is very essential step in irrigation management systems. There are many water flow measurement techniques as well as different types of water flow meters used in irrigation to measure the volume of water flow in pipelines but these all are too costly. This paper describes design and development of low cost automatic water flow meter which supplies only required amount of water to the crops saving water as well as energy. G1/2 Hall Effect water flow sensor is used as a sensing unit with a turbine rotor inside it whose speed of rotation changes with the different rate of flow of water. The Hall Effect sensor outputs the corresponding pulse train for frequency input to the microcontroller. The whole system comprises of AT89S52 microcontroller, G1/2 Hall Effect water flow sensor, relay, optocoupler, a water pump, 5V supply, LCD, keypad and some passive components. The AT89S52 microcontroller is programmed in Keil development Tool. KEYWORDS Low cost sensor, Hall Effect sensor, rotation of rotor, flow rate of water, AT89S52 microcontroller, Keil software, Ultrasonic flow meter.